...Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...
Patrick Henry (1736-1799) US Founding Father

Obama, whose ever changing veneer that hides who he really is, has completed his presidential PR team for his Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East. It is unclear what role the networks will fulfill. Questions concerning whether they will be tag team nannies for Obama or whether they will shape Obama's message for general consumption or whether they will wet nurse the candidate have gone unanswered.

Lured by an offer of interviews with the Democratic presidential candidate, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric will make the overseas trek, meaning that the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts will originate from stops along the route and undoubtedly give it big play.

John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor.

The Grand Tour is a time honored tradition for debutantes, privilegedyoung men, newlyweds and those who need to obscure unseemly deeds here in America. The Grand Tour is also an essential educational tool, especially for the upwardly mobile nouveau Riche , to appear to be worldly and sophisticated. A necessary expense for those wishing to enter the salons of power in the New World.

Sometimes those on the Grand Tour bring knick-knacks back for the family to exhibit to those they wish to impress. Other times the Grand Tour unfortunately provides the opportunity for a public fauxpax, helping to cement in foreign minds the image of the American rube. The most famous being a peanut farmer who meddled in the never ending Middle East peace negotiations who offered the Pax Fauxmana creating decades of death and suffering, but, for a short period, offered the false hope of a political solution.

Paula Nowakowski

Loaded Web

To enhance freedom, spread freedom.

Tech Staff

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it. - P. J. O'Rourke

"What an irony that a society confronted with plastic bags filled with the remains of aborted babies should be more concerned about the problem of recycling the plastic"... - Winifred Egan